Sheep
“A Night of Awakening is a very peaceful night, where no one harms one another.”
With Hosu's pleasant voice, a curtain of night fell around the table.
The scenery of the arcade vanished, leaving only the round table.
But the companions who had been sitting around it had disappeared like a dream.
As if someone had carved them out of the world, leaving only me.
“Because it is a night devoted solely to oneself — a night for realizing who you are and how you mean to live.”
Hosu's placid voice pierced the silence of a world where I seemed to be the only one left.
It sounded like a whisper from right behind me one moment, and like a shout from atop the table the next.
Even though he was standing quietly, plainly, across from me.
“Seon Yuhan. It is time for you to realize who you are, Seon Yuhan.”
That, too, would be a sound only I could hear — all of them would be experiencing the same phenomenon.
Each of them chewing over the same realization: that whatever their role, they would have to kill someone with their own hands.
“You are a Sheep.”
Ha.
A sigh escaped me on its own.
Honestly, the Sheep is harder than the Wolf.
The Sheep does get the ability to confirm whether a specific person is a Wolf — but only once.
And there's a penalty for guessing wrong. No idea what that penalty might be.
But even correctly identifying a Wolf presents a problem.
I'm given a chance to protect one person, myself included, but that too can be used only once, so I'd have to spend it carefully.
Would I use it on myself that first night to guarantee I survived?
Or leave that night's fate to the heavens, and only protect myself the following night, after revealing the Wolf I'd identified?
The Wolf, by contrast, is simple.
Lie convincingly enough to avoid being exiled by day, then make a successful hunt by night.
Of course, nothing in a labyrinth is ever that easy, so the Wolves probably have their own undisclosed penalties waiting too.
“Can I ask some questions?”
“Of course, Seon Yuhan.”
“The Sheep can check once whether someone is a Wolf, and if they are, the Sheep can protect one person on any night they choose. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then say I protect myself. But what happens if the Wolves marked me first?”
“In that case, precedence of timing does not apply. You will pass the night safely, Seon Yuhan.”
So I wouldn't need to worry about racing the clock, at least.
The Wolves, on the other hand, would be under pressure to mark their prey before their own kind did.
“Exactly how does exile work? Do we just raise hands and vote?”
“If there is someone you wish to exile, simply tell me. Freely, at any time before night falls. You may even phrase it as briefly as ‘Seon Yuhan. Exile.’ Whoever receives the most votes will be exiled from the ranch.”
“Don't tell me it counts even if not everyone votes?”
“Yes.”
A hollow laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
“So, say we all agree not to vote, and then right before night falls, one person asks for someone to be exiled. That person could be exiled off a single vote?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
I couldn't stop laughing.
What a vicious, vicious rule.
……Not that I could actually use that method myself.
I'd be the one exiled by landslide the next day.
If I ever did resort to it, I'd need to work out my own safeguards first and save it for the late game.
“So we're not actually required to hold an exile vote at all?”
At that, the Master of Ceremonies gave an indifferent shrug.
“That is correct. Though I suspect you are not that sort of person.”
I made an equally indifferent face.
I owed him no answers.
“No limit on how many Wolves or Sheep there are, right?”
“Correct.”
“And no one who's both Wolf and Sheep? You're not secretly playing, are you?”
If it's a labyrinth, that's exactly the kind of thing it would do.
“I'm afraid I don't understand. A Wolf is a Wolf, and a Sheep is a Sheep. I am merely the Master of Ceremonies.”
The corners of Hosu's mouth curled upward as he answered.
That smile is irritating, but as long as there's no such exception, fine.
“……Say, do you know Do-ssi? A die with eyeballs instead of pips on every face. The gambler on the 11th floor.”
Hosu's head tilted again.
“I'm afraid I don't understand.”
So he doesn't know him.
Though the fact that Do-ssi once mimicked Hosu's voice means Do-ssi knows of Hosu, at least.
Come to think of it, if I had to compare, that side's rules might sit a little higher in the hierarchy.
After all, he holds the authority to let humans escape this labyrinth.
……I wonder where in all this that person's rules lie.
The rules of the being who caused Lost in HAPPYLAND to glitch and call my name, who delivered an oracle through Project Delphi like a message from god.
Could they, too, have become part of a labyrinth and lost their way?
So adrift that they couldn't exist under their own rules, and had to latch onto the rules of another?
“Anyway…… the roles of the people who get exiled or eaten — those never get revealed, right?”
“Correct.”
“If you're curious, you'll simply have to play and see. Where's the fun in knowing everything beforehand?”
“Ha.”
I wasn't even angry anymore.
“The dark night has receded, and a new day has dawned.”
Lost in one worry after another, I hadn't noticed the night end.
As the darkness that had erased everyone lifted, familiar faces appeared around the empty table.
Clockwise from me sat Lee Jinsu, Lee Nahyeon, Hwang Juyeon, Jeong Jiho, Choi Jaeha, and Yu Hyeonjae.
In other words, Lee Jinsu and Yu Hyeonjae flanked me on either side, and looking straight across the table I could see Hwang Juyeon and Jeong Jiho.
Every face was grim.
“The night, as you have seen, always lasts twelve minutes, and is always followed by thirteen minutes of day before night returns.”
Twelve minutes, or thirteen, to decide who to hunt or who to exile.
Twelve minutes. Thirteen minutes.
Because those who are hunted or exiled truly die.
We would have to decide, with our own hands, whom to kill — in as little as twelve minutes and thirteen.
“Of course, you may exile no one at all. Though I cannot imagine what reason you might have to do so.”
Even the prey — the Sheep — can drive someone out of the ranch to their death by day.
And everyone knew exactly how many lives hung on their every word, which was precisely why no one opened their mouth easily.
“Um, so then……”
The first to break the silence was, unexpectedly, the one I least suspected.
Keeping my expression carefully managed, I turned my head to the left.
“Uh, so, I'll go first. I'm a Sheep, I guess……. Though of course everyone'll say that, so it doesn't really mean much, but……”
I couldn't tell if he was lying or not.
Lee Jinsu was withdrawn by nature and rarely met anyone's eyes.
“Then I'll go next. I think going around in order like this will work.”
Lee Jinsu had gone to the trouble of opening the conversation; it couldn't be allowed to fizzle out there.
Starting with me, seated to Lee Jinsu's right, I gestured counterclockwise around the circle so that Lee Nahyeon, on Lee Jinsu's left, would go last.
“I'm also a Sheep.”
The right expression, the right tone.
Even though I was telling the truth, I had to take care that it didn't sound like a lie.
One wrong word, and I could end up suspected as a Wolf.
When my introduction ended, Yu Hyeonjae glanced at me once, then slowly took in each person around the table in turn before speaking.
“A Sheep. Me too.”
The co-CEO of Yuwi Guild finished his introduction in a voice as dry as ever, yet taut with strain.
I stared at him, momentarily dumbstruck.
Blinking twice in rapid succession. An adam's apple bobbing hard. The very faintest tremor at the corners of his mouth.
Every last signal of a lie.
To my eyes, watching from right beside him, they were perfectly clear.
And this is supposed to be no different from what a businessman does for a living?
Anyone could see it — this bastard is a Wolf.
Carefully, I rolled my eyes and checked the others' faces.
Don't tell me only I, sitting right next to him, could see it?
I hadn't expected anything from the CPA on the CEO's immediate right.
But I'd had hopes for the magician across the table.
Even a clock running a minute slow, after all—
Honestly, if what you need is the correct time right now, a clock one minute slow beats a broken one every time. Obviously.
But she was seated directly opposite him, too far away to catch the fine-grained things — the micro-movements of muscle.
……Either way, I'd keep watching a while longer, and if no one else seemed like a Wolf, I'd confirm Yu Hyeonjae's identity during the night and use my protection on it.
“Ahem. I'm a Sheep too.”
Once Choi Jaeha's brief introduction ended, Jeong Jiho held up his sketchbook for us to see.
I'm a Sheep
I'd bought him the notebook and pen earlier, when we'd stopped at the convenience store on this floor to grab a meal.
……I have to win.
And to win, I have to drive out and kill every last Wolf, at minimum.
If that boy were a Sheep, fine. But if he's a Wolf—
Sooner or later, I would have to exile him.
“Me too. A Sheep.”
“Me too……!”
By the time the circle came around to Lee Nahyeon, the introductions were done.
I'd studied everyone's expressions and tones closely, but with introductions that short, I couldn't get a firm read.
Everything hovered in an ambiguous in-between.
The sheer strangeness of a situation where lives were truly on the line made people's faces impossible to parse.
I couldn't tell whether they wore those expressions because they might die soon — or because they might soon have to kill.
“But this is real, right? We really…… die?”
It was Lee Nahyeon, the youngest here besides Jeong Jiho.
Her eyes had been rimmed red when the Night of Awakening ended just now.
“Yes……. Probably.”
“I suppose so……”
All of them knew they were inside an Invasive Labyrinth.
On the way down here, every one of them had seen at least one corpse.
However hard they'd tried to ignore it, some corner of their minds must have registered it all along.
That they, too, could die.
“Is there really no other way……?”
But awareness does not automatically come with resolve.
Not the resolve to die. Nor the resolve to kill.
“Uh, w-well, Seon Yuhan, don't you have…… something? Any ideas?”
Choi Jaeha leaned forward slightly, searching my face with anxious eyes.
“I mean, you always figure things out so fast. You've been doing it ever since we first met.”
Six pairs of eyes. Twelve abysses, deep and dark as wells, converging on a single point — the name Seon Yuhan.
“Ah……”
Wearing the right expression for the moment is not difficult.
“I thought I understood things pretty well myself, honestly.”
Saying the right words for the moment is not difficult, either.
“But some things, there's just nothing I can do about. Nothing at all……”
Mustering a rueful, self-deprecating smile as if joking, I pointed beneath the table — reminding them what lay under this one.
“Ah.”
“Yuhan, you……”
My right big toe.
Which was why, since arriving at the arcade, I'd been the only one left sitting here.
“……Honestly. I'm a little scared too. I don't even know who's who yet, and I don't want to go guessing blindly.”
I lowered my head briefly, then lifted it and met their eyes again.
“But there is one thing I do know…… that sooner or later, I will have to exile the Wolves.”
So I already have it. The resolve to kill.
“Because I…… don't want to die either.”
And in the end, it was always the truth that was hardest to say out loud.